


The Cluster

by LitaLollipop



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 07:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6070789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LitaLollipop/pseuds/LitaLollipop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Crystal Gems couldn't stop the cluster from emerging from the ground. But, the cluster wasn't anything like they thought it would be. It wasn't a giant gem that would smash the planet in a clap. It looked like any other gem. Because of the fuss, she ran away from them. <br/>Now, the Crystal Gems must find her before Yellow Diamond decides to blow up the Earth just to find her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, this came to me in a dream. I don't really know where I'm going with this, but I already have an ending in mind. Let's see if I can get there.  
> English is not my first language, but I really wanted to try out something new. This is not my first fanfiction neither is the first story I write in English. It's just the first story I decided to post here.  
> I hope you enjoy it.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was up in the sky, there was not a single cloud covering its light. Birds were chirping in the distance, the wind was cool enough just so anyone wouldn’t melt under the sun. Normal people were doing their normal things. Walking around, reading a book, taking the dog for a walk… it seemed like it was a normal day.

Until the apocalypse came. Or at least, that’s how they called. 

It came to a surprise to all of them, unless they were one the few four that were out trying to avoid the said apocalypse. It sounded like a thunder on a cloudless day. The sky darkened like a huge storm was coming over. Black clouds were forming nearby, coming over the town like it was about to destroy it. And then, there was a huge beam of light uniting sky and earth. Initially, it was a white light, but as you stared at it, it began to change color. Almost like a rainbow.

How long did it take to disappear from the sky, nobody knew. It was long enough for teenagers to get a glimpse of it on their phones, long enough to become a thing on the news. It was long enough for everybody to start talking about it.

You could see the news car traveling in such hurry you could only assume it was a tragedy. Like someone important had just died. And then, all the news channels were driving to that area, trying to get an answer for what had just happened. And, probably because of the fuss everyone made about it on the media, everyone started to speculate that it was the end of the world and that they were being invaded by aliens or something like it. 

Conspiracy theories. 

Some said that the apocalypse had come early. Others believed it was aliens sending a message. There were people who believed it was a nuclear explosion. It was a huge discrepancy of belief. There were the science fiction folk, the reality folk, the fantasy folk, the ones who didn’t believe in any of it, and the homeless guys who walked by with cardboard signs saying that the end had come.

And then there were the few ones who believed they saw an angel on the streak of light. A human shaped like figure emerged from the light, only to disappear when the streak went away. The birds began to chirp, the clouds disappeared, the trees began dancing with the wind again. A normal day. Like it never happened. Except for one thing, and you could see it in the news. The image was shocking and quite beautiful at the same time. 

There was a hole on the ground, on the size of a car, like a meteor had hit Earth. Inside the hole, there were tiny bits of crystal, shining bright on the eyes of the camera. Few were the ones brave enough to go there and see it for themselves. The crystal was so tiny it looked like fairy dust. And then, there was another theory to look for. 

There was one reporter, the one that got sent away the very next day, that swore he saw the bottom half of a pink lion vanishing when he was getting closer to it. Nobody believed him. Nobody knew what to believe.

What nobody knew was what exactly all that meant. Nobody knew that a person emerged from that hole.

No. It wasn’t a person. It would be more accurate to call it gem. 

****

 

Our last memories were being part of a war. We didn’t quite remember the same things. Some of us remembered the war being a world of chaos, weapons slicing through our bodies into pieces just so we could form to die again, probably by the same type of gem. It was hell. 

Some of us didn’t remember the war part. We just remembered our gem being shattered into fragments by fused gems. It was disgusting to even think about it. That we were once killed by impure beings, beings forced into something they weren’t. 

And to think that we once hated fused gems. Guess we never thought that we would end up like this. Forced together in a mash of duplicated parts and body members that didn’t quite work. 

That’s who we are now. A forced fusion that can’t go back to normal. We were created for some reason we don’t understand. We don’t remember anything after the war. It was just black… And then we woke up in a hole on the ground. Sparkly bits of our sisters and brothers surrounded us. The bright light of a star on the distance almost blinded us and the sound of our arisal almost made us go deaf. We couldn’t agree on which body part should move first. We just wanted to get out of that freaking hole.

And when we got out, we got a glimpse of three gems that we are quite sure we saw before. Probably not those ones, but one of them. There was a fancy pearl, a green shaped figure that we could only assume it was another gem, thought we didn’t know which one, and  an impure being. A fusion. Just like we. 

Guess we couldn’t judge them anymore.

We wanted to say something. We wanted to scream them to help us. To kill us. To break our gem once again and spare us from the suffering. But the sound wouldn’t come out. Not in words, but in mumbles. They looked terrified. 

Disgusted. 

Now, we were one of the monsters that we hated.

They started to talk to each other, we couldn’t really hear what they were saying. We were screaming inside our mind, every voice screamed and shouted, trying to tell us what to do. It was chaos, another war inside our minds. There were some of us who wanted to control the body, one wanted to get out, the other wanted to hurt them. We didn’t really know what to do. We just stood there for a second, without direction, just seeing them start to disagree with each other.

Then we saw a diamond. The yellow one. And we started to fear for our lives even though we were just wishing for our death seconds ago.

“What to do?” We were panicking. The gems in front of us turned to face the diamond. They were really stupid. We took a step back, tripping and falling back into our hole. Something crushed and pinched our amorphous body. Then, suddenly, one of the voices went quiet. They recognized the gem that hit our body. Slowly, one by one, we got quieter, just admiring the shape and color of that gem. It was made with us? We didn’t know. We just knew that it made our minds quieter. We stopped fighting each other, we finally agreed on taking a new form, a functional one. 

“We need to get out of here” The sound finally came from our mouths. Our body began to change shape. We needed legs and fewer mass so we could move faster, we agreed. “We can’t leave them behind” 

“I know” 

“We must take them with us”

“They were part of the war. Maybe they know what is going on here”

“My friend is in there”

“Can we save them?”

Our body began to glow and change form, and soon we finally decided who we wanted to be. We grabbed the gem in our hands and got out of the hole as fast as we could. The pearl saw that we were escaping, but she couldn’t get to us. The diamond was giving them real trouble. 

One of us made our tongue get out as we ran on the other direction. Some of us giggled, amused by the thought.

“Where did you learn that?” We asked ourselves. We shrugged. Before there was an answer, an animal started to run with us. Someone was trying to talk to us, we didn’t want to listen. We just ran as fast as we could. Using some tricks up our sleeves, we changed forms once again, becoming giant monster so we could run faster, just so the lion wouldn’t get to us. 

But we couldn’t maintain that form any longer. it was tiresome. We went back to our form and looked behind us. None of them were chasing us. 

We sat back against a wall and sighed. There was sweat dripping from our forehead. We were panting. We took a deep breath and looked around. This city was really archaic. Where were we? This wasn’t our home, that was quite obvious. Though, what this place is, neither of us could agree on. 

We looked down to the gem in our hands. Our minds went wild thinking about our friends and our homeworld. Those were the only ones we could save, that is, if we can save them. It looked like a bunch of broken pieces put together with glue. Then it hit us. We looked down to our chest, looking for our own gem. It was on our chest and it looked just like the one in our hand. 

How could they betray us like that? How could they call themselves gems after what they’ve done to us? Neither of us was a full gem, we were just parts. Even if we could split apart like we hoped to in the beginning, we wouldn’t be full versions. One of us would be just a single arm, or leg. There were some that would be just a single piece of shattered gem. 

No, we couldn’t call ourselves a gem anymore. A gem was a single full piece of a crystal, but we weren’t that. We were bits and pieces, different voices in one mind. We weren’t those gems anymore, fighting for our homeworld or peace on Earth or anything like that. We were a cluster of beings. We couldn’t call ourselves Jaspers and Amethysts and Emeralds… No, we had a different name now.

I had a different name. 

I am Jade. And I am different than any other gem in my homeworld. And for whatever reason they made us into this, they were going to have some trouble. Because I am not going back.


	2. Chapter 2

“It got away!” Pearl said, throwing herself to the ground. “Now it’s just another gem that we have to find. I can’t believe that we let that happen!” 

“That was not suppose to happen. It wasn’t suppose to look like that. All the calculations led me to believe that the cluster was going to be big and strong and destroy this Earth on the process of being hatched!” Peridot mumbled to herself. 

“Come on, guys!” Steven tried to cheer them up. “Now that we know it’s not a giant gem that is going to destroy Earth, I think we can all agree that is going to be easier this way”

“How are you so confident?” Pearl asked. “We don’t even know how this cluster is supposed to look like, much less stop it!”

“It was supposed to look like a giant battle gem.” Peridot walked towards the hole. She needed to check. The soil was fust of colorful dust. Rejected gems, she assumed. She was afraid to touch it. “Apparently, she rejected the other gems until it found a different form. I would have to run some analysis to understand exactly what happened”

As they stood there, talking to each other, tired after the battle, they started to hear something. People talking, cars racing. 

“There are people coming over. We need to get out of here” Amethyst yelled at them and they all hopped on a pink lion and sooner than they realised they were at their home on Beach City. Pearl looked hopeless, Garnet was quieter than usual, Amethyst started to joke around just so they wouldn’t look like that.

And then there was Peridot who wanted to go back to kindergarten, just so she could find all the blueprints for the cluster. She wanted to know exactly what happened to it. It was supposed to be big and scary, but it wasn’t. And she wanted to know why. If she could find out the why, she could probably undo the cluster. Shatter it back to tiny fragments of other gems. Even though it was just like murder, there wasn’t anything else they could do.

It was the only way.

* * *

 

I looked at myself in the mirror. I had white skin, rainbow colored hair, and black eyes. I checked the rest of the body, again. Two arms, two legs, and a broken crystal in my chest. I looked better than I thought I would.

“I don’t think I’m going to get used to this form” I frowned.

“I think I look pretty” One of the voices in my head said and the reflection smiled back at me. 

“Do you think we can go back to normal?”

I didn’t experience silence yet in my head. It was like we just had asked the wrong question. I began identifying the voices in my head. There was six. They were still quite talkative, but I could feel that they were beginning to understand each other. 

“I don’t think there’s still normal for us”

“Hey, are you going get out of there or what?” I heard a voice from outside of the bathroom with thumps on the door. “There are people outside waiting, you know?” 

“We can’t stay here forever” We decided. And I raised my head up high, a habit I must have inherited from one of the gems inside me, and I opened the door. “Sorry” I said.

The girl from the other side looked up and down at me and I felt my spine tingle a little bit. She scowled at me and, without saying a word, walked by me, entering the bathroom. I walked out, still feeling quite left out. The people were staring at me and I didn’t knew why. 

I sat on a bench on the park, still holding the gem in my hand. I looked at them, trying to figure out how to talk to them. There must be a way, just like I could talk to the other six sides of me, there must be a way to talk to them. I raised it against the sky, the light going crazy inside of it. It was almost like I could see some of them. 

“Wow, that’s beautiful!” I heard someone walk up to me, staring at the gem in my hand. “Where did you get it?”

“Um... “ I stumbled my words. “I found it”

“You just found it? Where? Oh, my. This is so colorful, so unique! And the way it is mashed up together, it’s just an explosion!” She said, sitting on the bench next to me. She reached for the gem in my hands and then looked at me with a question. I stuttered, trying to say something, but instead, I just put in her hands. She looked at it with amusement, tilting it to one side and then the other.

I don’t know what it was, but I when I hand it over to her, I felt an empty inside. Like… Somehow… I was incomplete. I was starting to get nervous and anxious. Before I could say a word, she grabbed my hand and returned to me. 

“It’s really beautiful. I bet you could  _ rock it _ if you were to wear it as a necklace” She said with a smirk. I just stared at her. “Um… It’s a pun…? You know, because it is a rock?”

“What’s a pun?” I asked and she looked at me like I said something wrong.

“You are not from here, are you?”

“Not exactly”

“My name is Cassie” She said to me and raised her right hand to me. It must be a cultural thing from this place, but I can’t understand what it means. “Now you raise your hand” She said and I did. She grabbed my hand and shook it. Felt nice. “That’s how we humans greet each other”

“Oh, you’re a human?” I asked with wonder and she just laughed. 

“And you’re not?” She looked at me up and down, trying to stop herself from laughing. “What’s your name?”

All of the other names passed through my mind. I couldn’t decide on any of them, because, all of them were me and I was them. “Jade”

“It is a beautiful name” She smiled at me. I felt inclined to do the same. “I loved your hair.” She said, stroking a pink lock of my hair. “You must have a thing for rainbows. How did you do it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where did you go to make your hair look like this?” I shivered, remembering the moment I decided to get up and run for my life. I shrugged it off.

“I was born like this” 

“You must be joking” Cassie smiled and looked at me right in the eyes. She saw that I wasn’t smiling and she got serious. “Okay... Well, it was nice talking to you. But seriously, try putting that thing on your neck. It would look gorgeous on you”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is turning out to be bigger than I thought it would.

“I can’t believe I had to go to this miserable planet to fix this up and neither of you were helpful!” Yellow diamond screamed towards her gems. They listened in silence, their knees to the ground in form of respect. “And now I have a powerful destructive weapon running around this planet and we have no idea of how to find it!”

“We’re terribly sorry, but the kid…” One of them tried to speak, but Yellow Diamond interrupted her with a death glare. She was inches away from killing everybody in that room. There was a vain popping out of her neck.

“The kid isn’t a threat. He wasn’t supposed to be one. He is not strong so why should you fear him?” She said and nobody answered. She sighed and returned to sit down. “We need to find the cluster. This is the first time that it worked, though I’m surprised with its size. I need to find it so I can understand how to do it again. I will find this… Cluster even if I have to destroy this Earth.” She stared back at the gems sitting in front of her. They didn’t want to stare, they turned their eyes to meet the ground once again. “Leave now”

And they all stood up and got out of the room, trying to calm themselves just so they wouldn’t run away from her. They were all terrified. They’ve never seen her so angry. The Diamonds were supposed to be godly beings, calm and logical. They shouldn’t have feelings. Yellow Diamond never felt anything until the day that Peridot called her directly and disobeyed her. From that day onwards, she felt her chest tingle with a burning sensation and it was rather difficult for her to stay calm and logical when thinking about the Earth. If she had been thinking clearly, she would have noticed that she could use other ways to find the Cluster without having to destroy the Earth. But she was so fed up with that odd little planet that she was actually relieved with the thought of never having to see that planet again. 

Yellow Diamond sighed again, looking at the moon in the black sky. She could see the constellation from her galaxy there. That tiny little dot in the sky. She turned the other way and pushed a button, wishing to reach someone from her Homeworld. 

She was angry with the fact that she came from another galaxy just to see this Cluster emerge up close and there was nothing she could do but to watch it run away. And now, she had to call for backup from the other Diamonds. Even though it was a fight of hers, Yellow Diamond wanted to do everything in her power to see that miserable planet explode into tiny pieces. 

That way she could go back to her routine on her planet and not have to worry about this burning sensation on her chest that she couldn’t understand.

* * *

 

Steven was the only one who was sleeping that night. All the other gems were in the porch, staring at the night sky, whispering to themselves what would be their next move. They knew that Yellow Diamond must have probably called for backup. They knew that they were going to be in a world of trouble if they actually came to Earth. There was only three of them, plus Steven, a half human half gem that was too precious to go to war and Peridot who couldn’t even fight. 

They couldn’t possibly go into war like that, unprepared. It was certain death. 

They needed something, anything to help them fight the war. Or at least, stop them from coming in the first place. 

Peridot suggested to reactivate the kindergarten. But everyone, especially Amethyst, were disgusted by the idea. They didn’t want to destroy the Earth just to win a war to protect it. It was pure irony. No, that was something that was out of reach. 

“If only we had the cluster in our hands, it would be easier. Although, I’ve never seen one so small, I guess she could win the war in a few minutes.” Peridot said without thinking. They all just stared at her, confused. All that the Crystal Gems knew about the cluster was that it was supposed to be big and destroy the Earth. They didn’t even know what it was or for what purpose they created the cluster. Peridot notice the question in their eyes, so she began explaining. “The cluster was a gem project that would make the colonization in other planets easier. It is a massive destruction weapon. It could eliminate thousands of soldiers in a matter of minutes. Though this one is small, I don’t know if it is defective or not”

“Could we use it to defeat them?” Pearl asked. 

“Sure. But first, we would need to find it and then convince it to not destroy Earth.” Peridot shrugged. And then, came the moment of realisation. She looked at Pearl in awe. She knew now what she talking about. That was a good plan. “How we’re going to find it is going to be a problem”

“Well, it couldn’t possibly have gone too far”

* * *

 

I didn’t know for how long I sat there, thinking while staring at the gem in my hands. We talked to ourselves, trying to figure out how we could do it, but there was nothing. No sign that it was even working. I sighed. They were probably dead. No conscience. Almost like it was just a plain rock with sharp edges and colorful streaks. 

I stared at the sky. That sight was really familiar. Like it was on the background of some of my memories. Though I didn’t know which one and I didn’t feel like going through those things. If I went down that path, I would probably uncover some things that I really didn’t want to see. I stood up, trying to avoid looking at the stars and started to walk. I don’t know how long I walked. It felt like days or weeks. The time on this planet was quite different than we were accustomed to. 

I started to talk to the other parts of me. They were getting quieter, we were getting to know each other. We tried to un-fuse many times, but it didn’t work. That was our new form now, and we needed to get used to. 

Whenever I tried to release the gem on my hands, I felt that tingly sensation on my chest. The feeling of being incomplete. The voices in my head were louder and I felt my body started to shift, just a tiny bit. Why did that happen exactly I don’t know. I wish I could understand it. After a while, I felt like it was just another part of me. A part of my gem that was outside of my body. 

I started to ponder the reason I was brought to life. I wish I knew why they felt it was necessary to put me in such suffering. Maybe they had their reasons. I wanted to go back and ask them, see what did they want from me, ask them if they could unfuse me, but there were parts of me that screamed no whenever that thought came to mind.

After a day or so of walking, I got to another town. A big one. There were more people in this one and they wouldn’t even acknowledge I was there. They passed through me, walked by me and wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. I never felt more invisible. It was a nice feeling. 

To think I could walk among them and not being recognised as something else. Something that wasn’t quite human. 

And then, they started to panick. They were looking at the white clouds in the sunny sky, pointing and screaming. Like something was wrong. And when I looked up, I could tell exactly why they were panicking. But, I was the one who should be panicking more than them. 

Because I knew that the ship I was staring at in the sky was here for me. 


End file.
